The Serbian Dane Read Free

table. It was a very neat feminine room. Beyond it a tiny kitchenette was visible. A pot of water steamed on the hob. A short hallway led to a bedroom containing a double bed. Over the bed hung an Orthodox crucifix.
    Vuk’s eyes followed the movement of Emma’s slender legs under the thin stuff of her dress, as he took off his leather jacket and his shirt. His body was slim but muscular. A scar ran across his left shoulder: it looked like an old knife wound. Emma took one of the chairs from around the dining table and set iton some sheets of newspaper spread out in the middle of the kitchenette’s tiled floor.
    ‘Sit down, Vuk,’ she said.
    She picked up a ladle and poured the hot water from the pot into a bowl on the kitchen bench. She added cold water and tested it gingerly with her elbow before dipping a sponge into the warm water and wetting his black hair.
    He sat with his eyes closed while she gently soaped his hair. He savoured the feel of the strong soft hands slowly massaging the soap into his scalp. The suds turned black and ran down onto the newspapers as she rinsed his hair, then lathered it again. By the third rinsing his hair was a light blond. Very carefully she dampened his moustache. He sat perfectly still. Then, with one quick tug she ripped it off, like a mother removing a plaster from a child’s knee. Vuk opened his eyes. Emma’s face was very close to his. He smiled.
    ‘Hello, lover,’ she said.
    He kissed her.
    ‘Stand up,’ she said.
    He stood up. Emma undid his belt and pulled down his trousers. He had closed his eyes again, merely lifted one leg, then the other. She ran her hand down the back of his boxer shorts and pulled them off too. He stood quietly with his eyes shut. Another scar from yet another knife wound undulated across his hip like a little snake. She touched it lightly, and his skin broke out in goosebumps as he recalled the pain of the Croatian’s knife. She poured the water down the sink and ladled more warm water from the pot into the bowl, before dipping the sponge into it again and slowly washing him down. She started at his shoulders and ended with his feet. He stood there naked and perfectly still. His fair skin reddened easily, and she could see that she was having an effect on his penis, but she could also sense his self-control. She wiped off the soap with a freshly rinsed sponge. Then she pulled her dress over her head and lifted a clean towel that she had left lying on the kitchen bench next to the bowl.
    Vuk opened his eyes when he heard her pulling her dress over her head. He smiled, and the smile spread to his blue eyes. She dried him all over, slowly and sensually. Rubbed him down gently but firmly. Again beginning with hisface and shoulders and working her way down. When at last she softly stroked his balls, his cock rapidly swelled, she pushed him back onto the chair and settled herself on top of him.
    They stayed quite still. She tipped her head back slightly. He cupped his hands around her buttocks.
    ‘Stay with me tonight, Vuk,’ she said.
    ‘I’ll stay with you.’
    ‘What about him?’
    ‘He can wait. The war’s lost anyway. The treachery has begun. One day more or less won’t make any difference.’
    ‘Stay tonight and keep the demons away,’ she said.
    ‘I’ll stay with you tonight,’ he said and held her close.
    The demons would visit her anyway, he knew. They came in the mornings, in the cruel grey dawn, before the light broke through. Ghosts, skeletons, spirits and ethnic purgers. Shadows from the land of the dead that had visited her family and wiped it out in the first year of the war four years earlier, when she was only fifteen. Now they returned every night in her dreams, but the nightmares were more real to her than her waking life.
    Vuk envied her. Emma could feel pain and guilt. Vuk could feel her body.
    The rest was coldness.

Chapter 2
    T hese days, when Lise Carlsen woke, it was always with the shade of some stupid dream on